The Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI

this is a book that the writer put her heart and soul into writing- an excellent quality historical book-love the fact it has a list of key characters b/c it is hard sometimes to remember who is who during this ever changing period in English history .

It’s a long read but I learned a few new things also

I have zero credentials as a historian. It might be that this book serves the historian community well by laying out in minute detail the (to me, at least) mind-blowing shifts of allegiance surrounding Henry VI.However, I suspect that the author was seeking more than this. There is excessive adjectival detail about the principals' clothing, the impact of stained-glassed windows, the food they ate and the injuries suffered in the many battles described etc.My objective in reading the book was to obtain psychological insight and, in this, I was badly served. There is precious little discussion of the motivations of the principals: Henry himself was apparently driven by piety and Margaret by a sense of entitlement. As for the others, it seems that the reader is expected to assume that self-gratification was their prime motivation: either material gain or political influence.Others may be happier with this work than I, but even my third star is given with some reluctance.

Excellent book about a little known king.

This book is a heavy tome but it's written in such a way that I couldn't stop reading it. I've been interested in Wars of the Roses for a very long time and read many books on the subject. Henry VI always fascinated me and I always wanted to read more about him. Was he really "mad"? Was he really unfit to be king? In this richly detailed new biography, Lauren Johnson paints a picture of a man who wasn't "bad" or "evil" - he was just born in the wrong place at the wrong time.This sympathetic account offers a glimpse into Henry's world - and it was a dark, gruesome world, peopled by ruthless and power-hungry men. Henry was far from cruel or violent and had no inclination towards war. He was pious (perhaps excessively so) and striving towards peace - and yet his incapacity and/or lack of leadership skills were responsible for the outbreak of wars that we know as Wars of the Roses.Henry's life was tragic - here we have a child born into the highest echelons of nobility, a boy who succeeded his father at the age of nine months. Henry wasn't a king material - not because he didn't try but because he wasn't ruthless, ambitious,back-stabbing and calculating.Johnson's book shows a flawed man, a human being at the centre of one of the bloodiest conflicts in English history. She portrays him with skill, empathy and compassion. I loved it and I'm waiting for more books from this writer.

Lauren Johnson’s biography of Henry VI is a very well written, thoroughly researched work that offers a view of the Wars of the Roses through the eyes of one of the most perplexing English monarchs to have lived. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Wars of the Roses or trying to better understand the mysterious figure that was Henry VI. This is the first Lauren Johnson book I’ve read, and I look forward to reading more from this up and coming historian.

Good reading

This is an extremely well-written biography about Henry VI. As expected, especially during his minority, the story concerns what his uncles and advisors are doing, rather about the boy himself. As a child, he is totally in the shadows, but the struggle continues as to who will control him. The first third of the book is preoccupied with the ongoing conflict between the Duke of Gloucester (youngest brother of Henry V) and Cardinal Beaufort, uncle to Henry V. Gloucester’s antagonism created many problems, and overall went against England’s interests, especially in France.The war in France started downhill when Joan of Arc came on the scene, instilling the French with new hope, leading them to victory and convincing the dauphin Charles to crown himself in Reims. The English responded with their own coronation, first in England then in Paris, so young Henry became king of both countries—at least as far as the English were concerned. He was all of seven years old. But as king he started attending councils and even parliament, and though he was seen as a serious and even intelligent child, he was content to do as he was told. It became a habit, all the way into adulthood. But by his teenaged years, he loved giving gifts, grants of land, and pensions, and his generosity was becoming a drain on the exchequer. In this respect, he wouldn’t be governed. In another respect, his will was becoming clearer and clearer: young Henry VI wanted peace. And this policy was in direct conflict with his father’s legacy.The biggest take-away from this book was that the author laid the blame for many of the most damaging mistakes directly on Henry’s shoulders. For instance, the Duke of Suffolk was blamed for the disastrous policy of giving away the county of Maine in exchange for the privilege of Henry marrying Margaret of Anjou. But according to Johnson, Suffolk was acting under Henry’s direct orders; he couldn’t have made these momentous decisions on his own. In the end, the duke was condemned for the negotiations and eventually it led to his exile (and death). Henry’s incapacity to negotiate for his own benefit, his indecisive behavior, his inability to see the consequences of his behavior left a trail of casualties in his wake. As Henry apparently never fully recovered from his psychotic incident, his queen felt obliged to step into his shoes, so to speak. She was already too deep in duplicity and partisanship to smooth over divisions between the great nobles. The broken government became paralyzed, and the horrors of civil war followed. By then, Henry was everyone’s puppet king, and the author mused that he surely must have viewed the tragedy of his life with dismay. “It is a terrible irony that a man so devoted to peace was the trigger for the bloodiest battle in English history.” Even though Henry VI was the subject of this book, he is not depicted as a hero, nor is he whitewashed in any way. His faults are laid bare, and his good points, few though they were, were also presented rationally and fairly. In the end, we see a man just not suited for the position that was thrust upon him, and for that I think we feel more pity than censure.

This is a highly readable and engaging narrative history written with a specific focus on the king. It's fair to say it adds little new to the well known facts of Henry's tragic reign but that does not detract from its value. The only thing I disliked about it is that the author is prone to lots of purple prose more suitable to a historical novel at the start of many chapters. There's much speculation about the weather, costumes and so on that can't possibly be known and which add nothing to the history. This is something I was prone to as an undergraduate and my tutor hated it and used to delete whole sentences! Others probably won't be irked by it at all. Overall I'd highly recommend the book to all with an interest in the 15th century.

Really well written account of how England descended into chaos while being ruled by a decent man. Author does a great job of showing that Henry, while not the saint of Shakespeare's plays, was a good man and as a reader I gained some sympathy for the sheer scale of the challenges the king faced. But while Henry was a decent person no one can be left in any doubt that he was a monumental disaster as a ruler. He failed in every aspect of medieval kingship, excepting his piety, and by the time the narrative gets to the mid 1450's I was left wondering why he had not been deposed already. But the author shows just how ingrained the reverence for an anointed king was and onward Henry blundered until 1461. Also enjoyed learning about the people who kept Lancastrian hopes alive not only Margaret of Anjou but people such as Jasper Tudor and the dukes of Somerset. A tremendous book which I would highly recommend to anyone.

Lauren Johnson has constructed a clear and entirely credible narrative from the ambitions, double-dealing and broken alliances that formed the maelstrom that was Fifteenth Century English (and Western European) politics. Key actors and their families are mapped out for us with great skill and the central theme - that of the complex relationship between a weak monarch and a broken state - is described in a manner that will engage both those who are new to the period and those who have prior knowledge. In some respects Henry remains in the shadows but that is is more to do with the absence of reliable evidence than any lack ambition in the research. If anything, Margaret of Anjou emerges with the most impressive clarity. This is the best history book that I have read for some time.

Before he was a year old, Henry VI had become King of both England and France. Fifty years later, he had lost both of his kingdoms, his liberty, and finally his life. In literature, he is most often portrayed as a simpleton, dominated by his Queen, Margaret of Anjou, and later by the Kingmaker himself, the Earl of Warwick. This biography attempts to bring Henry out as a person in his own right, and on many levels it succeeds. It shows us a pious and well-intentioned man, who was totally unsuited for 15th century kingship. He was a good man but a weak king, whose failure to hang on to his French kingdom and rule his English one led to the Wars of the Roses during which he lost his throne and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was briefly restored to the throne when the Kingmaker fell out with the Yorkist Edward IV, but deposed again (the only king to lose his throne twice), and then murdered in the Tower. This novel shows us the man and the politician, it is detailed and analytical, and a good read. It points out that although Henry was imprisoned in the Tower for 5 years, we have no idea where in the Tower he was imprisoned, as no details survive. A good novel about the tragic life of this saintly king.

I am gradually making my way through biographies of all England's late medieval kings, and I think I made the right choice by purchasing Shadow King. Lauren does an extremely good job of communicating the events of Henry VI reign - as the title suggests from birth to death.The narrative has an enjoyable pace; never becoming stalled by unnecessary family trees through umpteen levels of consanguinity or the individual prices of individual pieces of silk for an individual item of clothing!Yes, I did come away from reading the book wishing for a little greater depth of interpretation, and the prose does lack an academic focus at times. The best example of this is how Lauren chooses to begin a great many chapters with descriptions of the weather. I appreciate her attempts to set the mood, but they do often come off sounding a little romanticised and perhaps better suited to a historical novel. That said, I did enjoy the cliff-hangers at the end of every chapter - characterised as small paragraphs setting the scene for what was to come next. Other readers may find them a touch melodramatic but I really liked them.There is a lot of history to communicate through Henry VI's reign and Lauren does a great job describing the twists and turns while keeping her story focused on him. There are plenty of other key players to choose from. So if you're looking for more detail on Margaret of Anjou, Henry Beaufort, John Bedford, or Edward IV et al, Lauren's biography does a great job of introducing them without deviating from her primary focus on Henry.A thoroughly enjoyable read.